A Couple of Quickies

OK, I've got a couple of non-reviewed books staring me down. For a number of reasons, I didn't feel I could do a full review on any of these so I'm clumping them together in little mini reviews for you.

First up is 1984 by George Orwell. I feel like I'm the last person on Earth (or at least the last person in America) to have read this book. I think most people are assigned it in high school. Somehow this has been on my list of books for several years and I'm finally just now getting around to it. Since most people have already read this book, I don't feel like I have to say much. Let's see, if you've ever wondered where the term Big Brother came from and haven't figured it out yet, read this book.

I'm kind of glad I waited until I was an adult to read this one because I think I caught a lot more than I would have if I'd read it when I was younger. Orwell has done a wonderful job of constructing a totalitarian world that makes the sane people feel insane for noticing the government's constant hand in the daily lives of its people. Our world may not be as dreary, but we certainly have the televisions telling us what to think and how to behave on a constant basis. This book will make you wonder where we're headed...

Oh, interesting side note: I never knew George Orwell was a pseudonym. His real name was Eric Arthur Blair. How crazy is that?

Other reviews of 1984:
Beastmomma
Books Love Me

OK, next up is Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. I read this book because my boyfriend's mom gave me her copy after she'd finished and I knew it would be a quick read. I personally was not a fan of this book. Not only was it typical chick lit, but the heroine of the story is sleeping with her best friend's fiance. Granted, her best friend isn't super great, but still. I don't know how you can get a heroine out of a situation like this one. In addition, I didn't feel like the main character, Rachel, grew as a person by the end of the story. I kept waiting for her to finally speak up for herself or call out her best friend on her bad behavior, but she never does. *SPOILER COMING* Even in the end when Rachel finds out her best friend had been cheating on her fiance the whole time with the guy she's supposed to have been dating, Rachel still feels bad and let's her best friend freak out at her without saying anything. This book just left me feeling empty and hating the way some women let their friends (and the rest of the world) treat them. I don't plan to pick up another Emily Giffen book anytime soon.

My last mini review is of Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams. It was a book I really enjoyed, but that I didn't think I could do justice with in a book review. Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot did a way better review, so I suggest you hop on over there and take a look at what she had to say about this one. As for me, I wish Adams was still alive so he could update this book.

Last Chance to See was written in 1990 and is about an around-the-world trip Adams took with a zooligist in search of critically endangered species. We are introduced to the white rhino, of which there were only 22 left when Adams visited, the Komodo Dragon, several species of endangered birds and a the baiji dolphin (which I'm fairly certain became extinct a couple years ago when the Yangtze, it's only known habitat, was dammed by China)

Adams uses his well-known humor to add some lightness to this heavy subject. His writing reminds me much of Bill Bryson, and made me wonder if he was one of Bryson's early influences. The book was well written and an intriguing subject. Despite its being nearly 20 years old, I think this is still a great book and important to read for those of us who are concerned about the environment and our effects on it.

More info about Last Chance to See:
A Year of Books (check this one out for updates on the animals in the book)

Things Mean A Lot (check this one out for a great review)

Another Chance to See (a blog about what's being done for these animals today)

The Blind Assassin: A Many-Layered Story

As with the other books I've read by Margaret Atwood, the reader is kept in the dark for a good portion of The Blind Assassin. Atwood tends to tell a story layer by layer, letting the reader get to the heart of the situation slowly, as if they're eating an artichoke. And, like an artichoke, you're never disappointed when you finally get to the good part, but sometimes it can be a lot of work getting there. I felt like The Blind Assassin was one of those times when it was a lot of work, perhaps because I wasn't as curious about where the story was going as I have been with her other books (Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale).

The book opens with the death of Laura Chase, the daughter of a once-influential family in Port Ticonderoga, Canada, in 1945. We then read a chapter of a book written by Laura Chase and published post-humously by her sister, Iris (hence the cover and reviewer's constant talk of "a novel within a novel"). From then on, the book switches back and forth between excerpted chapters of that book, The Blind Assassin, and Iris' telling of her family's history, the events that led up to the writing of the book, and her sister's suicide.

The book is really interesting, but I didn't find myself as drawn into it as I have been with other Atwood books – at least not until about 150 pages in, when we begin to see some of the layers begin to fall off more quickly. As I began to understand what was really going on, I began to get more and more curious about how the book was going to end and I found myself reading more and more quickly. But up until that point it was really hard going. Had I not read other Atwood books and understood her style of writing, I may have given up on this book after 50 pages or so. For this reason, I wouldn't recommend this as your first Atwood book (especially considering this book is more than 500 pages long!).

However, there are many things I like about this book. I liked that it was a historical novel, covering high society in Canada from about 1910 to 1947. And as with other Atwood books, I liked the social commentary, especially, in this book, about God.

For instance, on page 137 after her mother dies, Laura, age 8 at the time, begins to question God in a way she had never done before:

"In the nighttimes Laura would creep into my room and shake me awake, then climb into bed with me. She couldn't sleep: it was because of God. Up until the funeral, she and God had been on good terms ... But now she was no longer sure. She began to fret about God's exact location. It was the Sunday-school teacher's fault: God is everywhere, she'd said, and Laura wanted to know: was God in the sun, was God in the moon, was God in the kitchen, the bathroom, was he under the bed? ... Laura didn't want God popping out at her unexpectedly, not hard to understand considering his recent behaviour."

I love this simplistic, child's look at who and where God is, along with what his purpose is. Atwood recognizes this human trait of questioning God and the difficulty children sometimes have with just accepting faith because they sometimes take things too literally, especially where religion is concerned.

Atwood is a great story teller, and I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on her beautifully described scenes and wonderfully written stories, however I'd suggest starting with a different one of her books before taking on The Blind Assassin. If you insist though, be aware that it will take awhile before the plot really begins to come out. Atwood is not the type to take the plot and conk you on the head with it. Her books are very mysterious in this way and you begin to feel like a detective as you start to piece it together for yourself. My favorite part is finding out if I've got it right. With her books though, there's always some last minute turn that really surprises me and sticks with me, so look out!

Book Club Updates, Water for Elephants Review

As you recall, we read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen last month. It was a well told and well researched book about the early days of the American circus. The book is told both in the present and in 1931 by Jacob Jankowski. We start with him in an old folk's home, where he tells us he's either 90 or 93. He's past caring at this point about pretty much anything. Then one day he sees a bunch of the other patients gathered at one of the windows. He goes over to see what they are all looking at and finds that the circus is in town, and within throwing distance of his geriatric home.

The appearance of the circus brings back memories of his first experience with the circus, which began just as he was finishing his veterinarian degree at Cornell University. He goes through a tragic time and leaves in the middle of his final exams, walking until his legs get tired. Where his legs led him was to the town's railroad tracks. He jumps on the next passing train, although it's late at night and he's not sure what type of train he's just hitched. In the morning he finds that it's a circus train and he's taken on as the circus veterinarian.

The book then goes through his time on the circus, his interactions with the beautiful Marlena and her abusive husband, August. Not only does August treat Marlena badly, but he abuses the animals, especially Rosie, the Polish-speaking elephant taken on by Uncle Al, the circus ringleader.

I know not all people are huge fans of circuses, but if you can stomach it I highly suggest you read this book. It's obvious from her writing that Gruen has a soft spot for the circus and this time period. She wrote about it in a lovely way, without being too easy on the circus operators. She showed the dark side of the circus (beating animals, low pay, difference between working men and performers, etc.) without overdoing it. I never felt like she was trying to harp on about animal abuse or any of the other terrible things that used to happen in circuses. And the archive photos from Ringling and other circuses made the book even that much more fun to read.

THIS MONTH: For April I had a lot of suggestions from members, and I finally decided on The Caged Virgin by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I chose this book because I think it will encourage an interesting discussion at our next book club meeting (April 26, 2 p.m. at Cafe Bernardo's on R and 15th Streets in Sacramento), and because I read Infidel, Hirsi Ali's memoirs, last year and learned quite a bit about Islam and the way women are treated within it. It both outraged and inspired me, and I feel this book will do the same.

From Amazon: "Muslims who explore sources of morality other than Islam are threatened with death, and Muslim women who escape the virgins' cage are branded whores. So asserts Ayaan Hirsi Ali's profound meditation on Islam and the role of women, the rights of the individual, the roots of fanaticism, and Western policies toward Islamic countries and immigrant communities. Hard-hitting, outspoken, and controversial, The Caged Virgin is a call to arms for the emancipation of women from a brutal religious and cultural oppression and from an outdated cult of virginity. It is a defiant call for clear thinking and for an Islamic Enlightenment. But it is also the courageous story of how Hirsi Ali herself fought back against everyone who tried to force her to submit to a traditional Muslim woman's life and how she became a voice of reform."

I hope to see more people participate in both the online and live discussion of this book. I'm looking forward to seeing you all in person.

Other blog reviews of Water for Elephants:
Reading Adventures
A Year of Books
My Year of Reading Seriously
Living to Read

With evolution, nature can recover from nearly everything

If humans were to go extinct in the next few years, it's safe to say that mother nature will fully recover. There are some things she will likely not be able to fix, nuclear waste being top of the list, but evolution will help her to take care of a lot of the other problems humans have created, at least according to The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

Luckily Weisman didn't just focus on one city and tell us how it would be destroyed and returned to its natural state, which was what I feared when I began reading the book. The first chapter focuses on New York City, the penultimate city to most Americans, but he quickly moves on to other things. Weisman talks to bridge workers to find out how quickly bridges would corrode and crumble depending on climate. He also looks into how buildings deteriorate, how roads crack and give way to trees and plants, and how other species would be effected by the loss of humans.

The chapters about deterioration of man-made buildings were difficult for me to read as I don't have a very scientific mind. I had to really focus on each paragraph to be sure I was really understanding, which made this a long book for me. I found the chapters about case studies (Chernobyl, the DMZ between the Koreas, etc.), and those about other species, to be the most fascinating. As a crazy environmentalist I find myself always thinking everything would be better off without humans, but this just isn't the case. There are several species that would likely become extinct themselves as a result of human extinction, many of those being the animals we have painstakingly domesticated and bred for our own use.

Other chapters that took turns I didn't expect were the chapter on war, in which Weisman argues that war is actually good for the environment despite horrible examples of it causing destruction, and the section about birds, in which we learn that birds are the least effected by humans because they don't have to spend all their time on Earth with us but they are still killed in the hundreds each year because of human interaction.

Overall, I found this book to be really interesting and I appreciated the illustrations that helped to explain some of the more difficult issues and managed to break up the dense text for me. The book is well researched and well written, giving a very full picture of what would happen if humans disappeared without destroying the Earth in the process.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

In My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult brings to life the questions of stem cell research and genetic engineering through the book's main character, Anna, and her family. Anna, at age 13 has given bone marrow, stem cells and blood to her older sister Kate. And now her parents are asking her to give Kate a kidney as well. After all, it's what Anna was born to do.

When Kate was diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia at age 3, her parents decided to have another child, genetically engineered to be a match to Kate and hopefully to save Kate's life.

Now, 13 years later, Anna is tired of being a pin cushion and is seeking legal action to keep her parents from making her give a kidney - which may save Kate, but puts Anna's life in danger.

When I first heard about this book, I couldn't understand how anybody wouldn't do everything possible to try to save a family member, but after reading this book I felt I really understood how that type of decision could be made, although it would be difficult. Picoult does an amazing job of showing this from everyone's perspective, including the defending lawyer's position.

There were a few cheesy parts in there, and some predictable story lines, but for the most part I found this book to be a well-written and captivating read. And it made me cry, a lot, so it gets a high rating. Also, I found it difficult to believe that Anna was only 13 in the book. Her thoughts and actions seemed much more mature than that of any 13-year-old I've ever met. It was the one thing that kept stopping me throughout the book, but I just had to accept it and move on.

All in all I really liked this book. It got me to think about a subject I've never given much thought to. It also really made me think about what it must be like to be a parent trying to save a child with leukemia, and it made me wonder at what point they should give up.

Other blog reviews of this book:
ReadingAdventures
Dog Ear Diary

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I normally post new reviews on Monday, but I don't know how much time I'll have tomorrow so I'm posting it today. Sorry there haven't been many blogs lately. My internet hasn't been working and I've been working way too much. I'll try to get book news to you again soon. Now for the book review...

In a land ravaged by nuclear war, we find a father and son who have managed to save not just themselves, but their humanity. The son was born just after war sunk the world into a nuclear winter. He never knew the world with animals running wild and plants blooming and dying with the seasons. He's also never known a world where humans don't fear one another.

In the world where he grew up, ash is constantly clouding the horizon, humans hunt each other for lack of any other available food, and masks are worn in attempt to postpone the inevitable radioactive poisoning from the atmosphere. And the only person he can trust is his father, who is using the last months of his life moving his son south, where it is bound to be warmer and hopefully safer.

The story follows the two on their journey down the road. Their run-ins with other humans are often graphic, with the father turning at one point to see a headless infant roasting on a skewer. The descriptions of falling forests, barren land, and starving people can seem hopeless at first, but in the end we see that the one thing that was never lost was a sense of hope.

Throughout the story the father tells the son the difference between good guys and bad guys, pointing out that they themselves are the good guys. The two, no matter how long they have to go without food, will never stoop to eating other humans. In teaching his son this, the father tries to preserve the son's humanity.

The Road is a quick and interesting read. The punctuation is a little weird, missing apostrophes and commas, along with quotation marks, but it makes the book a quicker read and even might be symbolic of the loss of culture and education. I haven't read other McCarthy books, so I don't know if the punctuation is a trademark of his, or if it was for this book alone.

I'd recommend picking this one up though. It definitely wouldn't have caught my eye if it weren't the book club selection here in Paris last month. I'm glad it was chosen though and I'd like to read more of McCarthy's work to see what it's like.

Other blog reviews of this book:
ReadingAdventures
The Book Mine Set
She Wrote, He Wrote
Reading Reflections

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

I can sum this book up in one conversation I had with a French friend:

Me: "Hey, so I'm reading a book by Marguerite Duras..."
Them: "Oh no! No! You can't be reading Marguerite Duras. It's terrible."
Me: "But I didn't even tell you which book I'm reading."
Them: "It doesn't matter, they're all terrible. Please tell me you aren't trying to read it in French. Not even native French speakers can understand it when it's in French."

And the conversation went on like that. And it's true. I sought out the advice of my French friends after I had already started reading this book because I was having such a difficult time getting through it. I thought maybe it was just a bad translation, but apparently that's just how she writes.

The Lover reads as though Marguerite Duras had a loose-leaf journal that she accidently dropped, or maybe threw against a wall, then picked it back up, not bothering to see if pages were missing or if it was in the correct order, and had it published. She goes from being age 52 in one paragraph to being age 8 in the next. Without a main timeline until the last few pages of the book, The Lover was a confusing read. To add to the confusion was the fact that very few of the characters were named.

The book is autobiographical, talking about the author's time spent in Saigon during the 1930s as a French colonist. During that time she had a Chinese lover, which was unheard of at the time, both because of the racial difference and because of their different social classes (she was poor and he rich). To the other people in the book, including her mother, this made her a prostitute, using him for his money.

Despite my dislike for the book, I did find a few passages I enjoyed, including this description of the dry season in Saigon: "The light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency, in torrents of silence and immobility. The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. Blue. The sky was the continual throbbing of the brilliance of the light." (Page 86).

Aside from a few lovely passages, I don't understand how this was Duras' most acclaimed work. Perhaps it was the sex scenes, which may have been scandalous in her time. I really don't know. What I do know is this book was barely more than 100 pages and it took me nearly two weeks to get through it. Also, I found the afterword and information about Duras' life to be more interesting than the book she wrote about her life. I'd have preferred to have read a biography written about her than to have read this book.

Songs Without Words by Ann Packer

When Ann Packer released her first book, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, it was one of my favorite books of the year. It was a book that really brought out my emotions. I cried and cringed with the character in the book. And I’ve been hoping for years Packer would write more great books. It finally happened in September 2007 with the release of Songs Without Words, a book about a family whose teenage daughter attempts suicide. The book is told in vignettes from each family member’s perspective, including the mother’s best friend, Sarabeth, whose mother committed suicide just before the two friends entered high school.

Seeing the situation from each perspective was interesting and showed just how deeply a suicide attempt can affect every person involved, not just the person who tried to take his or her own life.

I enjoyed the book, although it started off quite slow in the beginning. As I got through the book though, I realized the slowness in the beginning was necessary because it allowed us to like and connect with each of the characters before we saw them fall apart. However, even knowing the background of her character, I found Sarabeth to be unsupportive and whiny through most of the book. I really was quite irritated by how selfish she was throughout the book and I was surprised that she and Liz, her best friend, were so easily torn apart when the suicide attempt happened. I would have almost rather have had her out of the story completely than to have her extra story line be part of the book. After awhile I just wanted to skip over her vignettes.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this book was that it’s set in Northern California, where Packer lives. It has also been my home for nearly 15 years, so the book was able to really come alive for me as I saw the characters driving down familiar freeways and eating at familiar restaurants. It also helped me to feel a little less homesick, which was nice.

All in all, this is a book worth reading, but I have to say I was a little disappointed after waiting five years in such anticipation for another Packer book.

It’s a strange time to be a Jew

Michael Chabon has created another masterpiece with “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” his most recent novel. While his other books were beautifully written, I found some of them difficult to get through. That was not the case with this book, which moves more quickly than Kavalier and Clay, and kept me interested throughout.

With this book Chabon creates a world in which Roosevelt’s suggestion to move displaced Jews to Alaska after World War II has been put in place. The only problem is Roosevelt included a move-out date for the Jews in order to get the legislation through, and that date is quickly approaching. While the other Jews in Sitka are preparing their paperwork to move abroad, or are applying for visas to stay within the United States, Meyer Landsman is busy trying to beat the clock on a murder that took place in the hotel where he lives.

In addition to the murder case, Landsman is haunted by a number of other ghosts, including the suicide death of his father, an unborn child, a possibly murdered pilot sister and the memory of his failed marriage. He spends much of the novel battling a drinking problem, which gets him into some interesting, if not painful, predicaments. His counterpart in the book is his partner and cousin, Berko Shemets, a half-Jew, half-Tlingit bear of a man.

Shemets plays the part of the level-headed friend in the book. He is also envied by Landsman for his ever-growing family. Shemets is dealing with his own battles throughout the book, while trying to keep Landsman from being kicked off the police force. He ends up being one of my favorite characters, with Landsman’s ex-wife (and boss) being one of the other great characters of the book. The relationships between the characters makes the book an enjoyable, and sometimes uncomfortable, read.

The book has plenty of twists and turns, including a weird chess obsession, and kept me guessing until the end. Perhaps if I knew more about Jewish culture I would have figured it out before the end. But lacking that, this was the first mystery book I’ve read that I wasn’t able to figure out before the punchline.

This book was also reviewed on:
Living To Read